When it comes to improving one’s craft as a salesperson, or as someone doing collections, as an administrator, office manager or even as a waitress, what are the possibilities?

Well, some folks do essentially nothing. They wait for their current employer to give them additional training.

And there are some when they go through this additional training, don’t really take advantage of it. Their intention to improve their skill isn’t really there. This individual isn’t aspiring to become more effective. They are fine on “getting by.”

And then we have the person who does utilize this additional training to get better at what they do. They look forward to this training and are very focused on getting the most out of it.

But there’s one last category here. This is the person who doesn’t wait for the company’s additional training. They are reading books, taking online courses, signing up for night classes at local colleges with one burning desire in mind. To become more effective. To get better at what they do.

This individual may also be looking to learn new skills. To take on new and more rewarding positions in the workplace.

They may take this pro-active approach to more training to have more leverage when asking for a raise.

They may want to be more effective because they care about making the company overall more effective.

They may just have it in their bones to always be learning how to do things better, to be more productive, to be more successful.

Your applicant falls somewhere in this spectrum of just getting by to continually working on ways to improve their skills.

Asking the question, “what have you done to be become more effective?” along with some digging, should let you know where.

And that’s a nice nugget of insight into the person in front of you.

As the law varies in each area, please check with an attorney to ensure you are applying these tips within the law.